goal auditing service

Endeavours resulting from ill-considered goals can be worse than ineffective — they can be counter-productive.

At one end of the scale you have the individual who buys a smart phone to save time and ends up more distracted and less productive. At the other end of the scale you have whole societies running towards ruin.

And in between you have lots of costly muddle and waste — like a $100,000 intranet that's hardly used, despite the fact that it's 'best practice'.

Projects are two-a-penny, but what about goals? Does your organization have one? Does everyone know what it is? Is everyone into it? Are you? Does it align with your personal goals? Are you confident about it?

Reducing risk

Few organizations think twice about paying for legal, regulatory, financial, or safety advice. And yet key projects often fail because they just don't 'fly': the proposition is in some way unsound, and customers (internal and external) won't buy into it. Or projects proceed at great cost, only for fundamental flaws to later emerge. Or, worst of all, work proceeds, improvements are made, and all the while the work has been holistically counter-productive — entrenching bad behaviour or needlessly wasting resources. It is the falsest of economies to avoid deep questions.

The Optimal Goals service is designed to reduce this kind of risk.

At the widest perspective, an optimal goal should lead to a holistically positive outcome — it should make things truly better. As part of that it should:

1. motivate and inspire those involved
2. acknowledge limitations
3. meet needs without detriment to others (or to their ability to meet their own needs)
4. leave the environment in a healthy, or healthier, state

Shouldn't goals be 'SMART'?

Sure, specific, measurable, achievable, results-oriented, time-bound (SMART¹) goals might well be optimal for a particular goal. But, in isolation, those qualities might also be restrictive and represent an outmoded, short-term, it's-all-about-productivity view of the world. We look further and dig deeper.

There are three steps to a goal audit.

1. Preparation: Simon reviews your enquiry, confirms details, researches, writes questions, and schedules the meeting.
2. Meeting: Simon meets with you for around two hours. You tell him about your goal, he asks questions and interprets your responses.
3. Report: Simon writes up his findings, analysis, and recommendations (with the basis for each).

I know, this is a strange new service, but it's needed: poor goals result in too much waste and unfulfilled potential.

And poor goals have always 'stood out' to me, so, after 20 years of sorting out sub-optimal documents and information systems, it's time to apply my skills and experience to a wider range of issues.

I have always been a thinker and my interest in 'nakedizing' (uncovering a true goal) started early. As a child I was always encouraged to use my 'common sense' — to think things through: needs, goals, causes, effects.

In 1986, when I spent a year in South Africa as a Rotary exchange student, I couldn't help 'think through' the topic of personal security because the ever-present panic buttons, barred windows, and gated communities we're totally foreign to me.

Even then (I was 17), I knew this was a flawed strategy — it was all response and no prevention. If you want to make your community safer, you need to address the causes of whatever has made it unsafe. It is not rocket science to work out that if you invest in the people around you, you won't need to keep spending money protecting yourself from them. Of course, some call such thinking idealistic, but, with a wide-angle lens on your camera, it's more realistic (and sensible).

But wide perspectives and long-term views are still not in vogue, so we lazily vote for those who say they will protect us rather than seek out those who will toil with us to turn things round. And, in South Africa, the violence continues².

I don't know if this service will take off or not, but I am quite sure that helping others to improve the quality of their goals — big and small, public and private — is a worthwhile endeavour.

How much will it cost?

As this service is still at the experimental phase, Simon will negotiate the total fee on a case-by-case basis. To book an audit will require payment of a non-refundable deposit of NZ$500 (plus GST for New Zealand customers) and travel costs (for interviews not held in Auckland or Wellington).

Where does the interview take place?

Wherever it suits you but, ideally, somewhere closely related to your goal and where you will feel able to communicate freely.

How do I book an audit?

Email Simon (simon[at]nakedize.com) to get the ball rolling.

What if my situation is too complex to explain in a couple of hours?

This is unlikely. While solutions can be very complex, goals (and problems) can usually be summed up in minutes. Background information and 'complicating factors' can take time but these details, if relevant, can be provided before or after the interview.

What if I don't like the advice?

How you respond to the report's findings and recommendations is up to you. If you don't think the advice is worth the price tag, don't pay the balance of the bill (but please tell Simon why).